Hello fellow poor people. I had the good advantage of knowing early on in my life that I was straight up poor. I come from the minimum wage working world here in the United States. I have had the same or similar experiences many of you speak of and in a way, it makes me feel better knowing I wasn’t the only one.

I remember vividly my poorest day. My wife had recently moved out as she decided one day she couldn’t be a mother or married. I was a single dad now to a 9 and 11 year old. I had the mortgage and car payment and bills and food ….all of it coming at me.

I did what everyone here did. Cut bills, worked more, shopped only at discount stores but at the end of the two weeks…we were eating scraps and had ZERO luxuries. My one “luxury” I allowed myself was cheap coffee with artificial sweetener. I really looked forward to my coffee in the morning and at night after the kids were in bed.

Eventually though, I just could validate purchasing sweeteners so I just stopped buying it. It’s just $3.00 but how could I justify that when we were eating scraps.

Anyway, I went to work one day and the company I worked for had been around for 40 years. They celebrated by offering breakfast and coffee in a serve yourself format. I was so ecstatic! Cause hey, free meal!

As I went in for my free breakfast there it was. A large zip lock baggy of my favorite coffee sweetener. Probably like 300 packets, which to me was a three month supply.

So at the end of the breakfast period they made an announcement that if anyone wanted a second serving of breakfast they should go “take anything you want”

When the coast was clear and no one around I snuck in, got another serving and the grabbed the baggy of artificial sweetener and hid it in my lunchbox.

That evening after the kids had eaten and went to bed I was celebrating my thievery with a cup of sweet coffee when I realized,…this is my poorest day.